Carlo Battisti (Romanist)

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Carlo Battisti (born October 10, 1882 in Trient , Austria-Hungary ; died March 6, 1977 in Empoli ) was an Italian Romanist , Italianist, toponomist and politician of irredentism . In 1951 he starred in a film by Vittorio de Sica .

life and work

Career as a university lecturer

Carlo Battisti's parents originally came from Fondo in the Non Valley ; his father was a high school teacher in Trento. From 1900 he studied at the University of Vienna with Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke , Adolf Mussafia , Karl von Ettmayer and Elise Richter . He did his doctorate on the old Trentino comedy La Catinia (1419) by Sicco Polenton (published in: Archivio trentino 19-21, 1904-1906, a total of 157 pages) and completed his habilitation with the text Die Nonsberger Mundart. Phonology (Vienna 1908). He first became a librarian. In 1914 he was unable to comply with his appointment as professor because of military service. At the beginning of the First World War he was called up as a lieutenant in the reserve of the Kaiserjäger and was taken prisoner by the Russians near Uhnów in 1914 . He taught at times at Tomsk University . After the war he returned to Italy and from 1919 headed the reconstruction of the library in Gorizia , which was destroyed by the war and now part of Italy.

From 1925 until his retirement in 1952, Battisti taught Romance Philology at the University of Florence . In Florence he trained librarians and archivists and was director of the Institute for Glottology and co-director of the "Istituto Internazionale Etrusco". After his retirement, he continued to work scientifically and held lectures at the University of Lecce (today: Università del Salento ).

Between 1936 and 1978 he was the author or co-author of 13 volumes in the series Dizionario toponomastico atesino [place name dictionary of the Adige Valley]. He was also the founding editor of the series Dizionario toponomastico trentino (Florence 1974 ff.).

From 1910 he was a member of the Accademia degli Agiati in Rovereto .

Role in the South Tyrol question

Battisti wrote as early as 1906 in the yearbook Archivio per l'Alto Adige just founded by Ettore Tolomei ; because of differences of opinion on the question of ethnicity of the Ladins, they went their separate ways until 1925. At the University of Vienna Battisti had received several commissions for linguistic research in the Alpine valleys and was also able to publish the results. Even in Vienna, his linguistic research was geared towards the activities of political irredentism . After the end of the war, he was faced with the problem of Italianizing the territories gained in the Treaty of Saint-Germain and their German and Ladin populations . In the dispute over the Questione Ladina , the linguistic research of the so-called "Battistini" also resulted in an Italian claim to the Romansh parts of Switzerland . The polemic in the 1930s about the origin of the Etruscan language , in which Battisti participated, also had a political background . The resumption of collaboration with Tolomei in 1928 ensured that Battisti collaborated on the new edition of the name book of South Tyrolean place names, which became official by royal decree in 1923 . In 1936 Battisti was accepted into the management of the Istituto di Studi and the Archivio per l'Alto Adige . In the years up to 1942 Battisti managed in an organizational effort to have ten volumes of the Dizionario Toponamastico Atesino produced in his Fiorentine institute , for which he had a budget of 100,000 lire . In 1939 he gave an account of the work done in the fascist-propagandistic magazine Atesia Augusta with the words:

"La maggior soddisfazione di uno scienziato italiano è quella di veder riconosciuto ed apprezzato dal Duce il lavoro principale della propria vita."

"The greatest satisfaction of an Italian scientist is to see Mussolini's own major work recognized."

When in 1943, with the occupation of Italy by the German Wehrmacht, South Tyrol was defeated as the operational zone for the foothills of the Alps , Tolomei was arrested by the Gestapo and taken to Germany. The institute in Tolomei's South Tyrolean residence in Montan was dissolved and the research documents were stolen (they disappeared without a trace after the end of the war). Battisti was able to publish the 1944 annual volume of the Archivio per l'Alto Adige as well as a further compilation of Ladin place names in the Italian Social Republic (RSI) in Florence .

After the liberation of Florence by the Allies, Battisti was appointed acting director of the Istituto di Studi per l'Alto Adige in Florence. Tolomei was treated mildly during the cleansing from fascism (because of his imprisonment in Germany), kept the title of senator he had been awarded under fascism and worked again at the Paris Peace Conference in 1946 by drawing up maps of ethnicity in South Tyrol in the usual way.

For Battisti, too, in the works after 1945, the underpinning of the Italian claim to South Tyrol was in the foreground of his state-sponsored publications. "Even after 1945, he persisted in the justification of the Brenner limit, the validity of the principle of natural limits and the watershed theory ...". "For Battisti, the affiliation of South Tyrol to Italy was legitimized by the alleged" deep romance "of the entire area, which he basically viewed as a mixed-language region." On the delicate question of the revision of the option provisions, he vehemently opposed the repatriation or resettlement of emigrated South Tyroleans . In 1955 Battisti reacted with violent polemics to the attempts by Austria , which was now sovereign again, to take action on the South Tyrol issue. Nonetheless, the gradual "renunciation" of Italian policy on the Tolomese denationalization of minorities was accompanied by academic recognition of the linguistic status quo. The counterpart of the arduous path to South Tyrol's political autonomy was the gradual recognition of minorities in the region and the inclusion of "bilinguismo" in the scientific analysis in the journal headed by Battisti . From 1969 onwards, no more political contributions were published in the journal. However , even in the 1960s, contrary to historical evidence , Battisti did not want to reject the historical thesis advocated and politically coined by Tolomei that South Tyrol was only superficially Germanized in the Middle Ages .

Role in filmmaking

As Battisti was traveling to attend a board of examiners to Rome, spoke to him Vittorio De Sica in front of the Ministry of Education to him for his neorealist film Umberto D. get involved. At the age of 70 he played the lead role in the 1952 film De Sicas. This experience prompted Battisti to grapple with the language of film as a linguist and to make a scientific documentary about Ladin customs, Le Nozze Fassane , for which he received a public grant from the Trentino-Alto Adige region at a production cost of 500,000 lire.

Fonts (selection)

  • Report on a research trip to investigate the Ladin-Trientin dialects , Vienna: Holzhausen, 1909
  • The Nonsberg dialect (phonology) . Vienna, Hölder, 1909
  • On the Sulzberger dialect: a travelogue . Vienna, Holzhausen, 1911
  • Le dentali intervocaliche nei dialetti italiani , hall a. P. 1912
  • The dialect of Valvestino. A travel report . Vienna, Hölder, 1913
  • Research into place names in Oberetsch during the years 1914-1924 , 1926
  • Karl R. von Ettmayer; Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke; Carlo Battisti: Principles of Romance Linguistics: Dedicated to Wilhelm Meyer-Lübke to celebrate the completion of his 50th semester and his 50th year , Halle a. S .: Niemeyer, 1910-1912
  • (Ed.) Testi dialettali italiani in trascrizione fonetica , Halle a. Pp. 1914-1921, Sala Bolognese 1988
  • Studi di storia linguistica e nazionale del Trentino , Florence 1922, Sala Bolognese 1986
  • Filoni toponomastici prelatini nel bacino del Noce , in: Studi Trentini, annata IX, Trento 1928.
  • Popoli e lingue dell'Alto Adige. Studi sulla latinità altoatesina , Florence 1931 (collective publication )
  • Polemica etrusca , Florence 1934
    • The current state of Etruscan linguistic research , Florence, R. Universita degli Studi di Firenze, Istituto di Glottologia, Prof. C. Battisti, 1939
  • Dizionario toponomastico atesino , 1936
  • Storia della "questione ladina" , F. Le Monnier, Florence 1937
  • Fonetica generale , Milan 1938, 1978, 2000
  • I nomi locali della Pusteria , 1940
  • Storia linguistica e nazionale delle valli dolomitiche atesine , Florence 1941
  • L'Italianità dell'Alto Adige , Florence, 1945
  • (Ed.): Essais sur le Haut Adige , Florence 1946
  • I nomi locali della comunità di Cortina d'Ampezzo , 1947
  • Avviamento allo studio del latino volgare , 1949
  • Polemica Ampezzana: Ampezzo, Ladina e Cadore. Terza lettera aperta al Comitato Esecutivo della "Zent Ladina-Dolomites" , Firenze 1949
  • with Giovanni Alessio : Dizionario etimologico italiano , 5 vols., Florence 1950–1957; 1975 (4132 pages)
  • (Ed.): Atlante toponomastico della Venezia Tridentina , Florence 1951ff.
  • (Ed.): Miscellanea di studi linguistici in ricordo di Ettore Tolomei , Florence 1953
  • Italiani e Tedeschi nell'Alto Adige. Osservazioni su una recente pubblicazione etnografica alto-atesina, estratto da L'Universo , 1953
  • Commento al foglio 2: Saggio di cartografia toponomastica atesina, comune di Castelrotto , 1953
  • Il confine italo-austriaco al Brennero , Firenze, 1954
  • Opzioni, riopzioni e separatismo nell'Alto Adige , Florence 1954
  • L'Italia e l'Alto Adige dall'accordo italo-austriaco del 1946 alla nota austriaca del 1956. Esperienze d'un decennio , Florence 1956, 1957
  • Esperienze di un decennio. Seconda edizione riveduta e ampliata . Firenze, Le Monnier, 1957
  • Sostrati e parastrati nell'Italia preistorica , Florence 1959 (lectures at the University of Lecce 1956–1958)
  • Le Valli Ladine dell'Alto Adige e il pensiero dei linguisti italiani sulla unità dei dialetti ladini , 1962
  • (Ed.): L'Alto Adige nel passato e nel presente . Studi raccolti da Carlo Battisti, Florence, Istituto di Studi per l'Alto Adige, 1963
  • La relazione della commissione dei XIX e l'Alto Adige , Firenze, Barbera, 1964
  • Il censimento del 1961 e il bilinguismo nell 'Alto Adige , Firenze: Istituto di studi per L'Alto Adige ( ca.1965 )
  • Avviamento allo Studio del Latino Volgare , Bari 1966
  • with S. Vacante e R. Cajoli: Alto Adige Addio! , Ed. del “Borghese”, Milan, 1967
  • I nomi del Roveretano distribuiti per comuni , 1968
  • I nomi locali del Burgraviato di Merano , 1968
  • La distribuzione dei dialetti trentini , Firenze: Istituto di studi per L'Alto Adige, 1971
  • I nomi locali dell'altopiano di Lavarone Luserna , 1972
  • I nomi locali di Trento e dei suoi dintorni , 1972
  • I nomi locali della media Venosta (Val Senalese e Val Martello) , 1978
  • L'Italia dialettale, pubblicato da Arti Grafiche Pacini Mariotti , 1999

literature

  • Giovan Battista Pellegrini:  BATTISTI, Carlo. In: Massimiliano Pavan (ed.): Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani (DBI). Volume 34:  Primo supplemento AC. Istituto della Enciclopedia Italiana, Rome 1988.
  • Gisela Framke: In the fight for South Tyrol. Ettore Tolomei (1865-1952) and the “Archivio per l'Alto Adige” . Tübingen: M. Niemeyer 1987 ISBN 3-484-82067-5
  • Rolf Steininger : 1918/1919. The division of Tyrol . In: Georg Grote , Hannes Obermair (Ed.): A Land on the Threshold. South Tyrolean Transformations, 1915-2015 . Peter Lang, Oxford-Bern-New York 2017, ISBN 978-3-0343-2240-9 , pp. 3-25 .
  • Francesco Pironti: Il Deciframento della lingua etrusca attraverso la traduzione completa, libera e letterale, italiana e latina, dei testi etruschi maggiori, con esteso commento critico e grammaticale. Volume I , Lanciano 1933 (The grammar school teacher Pironti, who made it onto the front page of the Osservatore Romano with his thesis on the Greek origin of Etruscan , took Battisti's 1934 devastating criticism so seriously that he committed suicide on October 6, 1935. )
  • Carlo Battisti: Come divenni Umberto D. , Rome 1955
  • Autobibliografia , ed. by Giovan Battista Pellegrini , Florence 1970
  • Studi offerti a Carlo Battisti e Gerhard Rohlfs , in: Bollettino dell'Atlante linguistico mediterraneo 13–15, 1971–1973
  • A Carlo Battisti per i suoi novanta anni , in: Archivio per l'Alto Adige 66, 1972
  • Studi in memoria di Carlo Battisti , in: Archivio per l'Alto Adige 72, 1978 (With appreciation by Giulia Anzilotti Mastrelli and list of publications)
  • Atti del Convegno Commemorativo di Carlo Battisti , Trento 1978
  • Emanuele Banfi: Carlo Battisti. Glottologo e attore neorealista , Trento 1993
  • Yakov Malkiel, 144. The etymological dictionary of informant and corpus languages , in: Dictionaries. Dictionaries. Dictionnaires. An international handbook on lexicography. Second part of volume , ed. by Franz Josef Hausmann, Oskar Reichmann, Herbert Ernst Wiegand and Ladislav Zgusta, Berlin. New York 1990, pp. 1323-1334 (here: 1325)
  • Studi in memoria di Carlo Battisti , in: Bollettino dell'Atlante linguistico mediterraneo , 29–35, 1987–1993

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Gisela Framke: In the fight for South Tyrol , p. 126f
  2. ^ Entry in the academy's member database
  3. ^ Gisela Framke: Im Kampf um Südtirol , p. 64 and p. 106
  4. ↑ Tolomei also had his sights on the Münstertal and wanted Switzerland to harm the Vorarlberg for it. Gisela Framke: In the fight for South Tyrol , p. 164
  5. ↑ Gisela Framke: In the fight for South Tyrol , p. 121
  6. ↑ Gisela Framke: In the fight for South Tyrol , p. 111
  7. ^ Carlo Battisti: Il Dizionario Toponomastico Atesino . In: Atesia Augusta. Rassegna mensile dell'Alto Adige , vol. 1, no. 1, March 1939, pp. 27–34, here p. 34.
  8. ↑ on denazification in Italy see Commissione di epurazione in the Italian Wikipedia
  9. ^ Nationalism in Carlo Battisti , Gisela Framke: Im Kampf um Südtirol , pp. 211–217
  10. ^ Hannes Obermair : Nation-Building facendo edizioni? Il "Tiroler Urkundenbuch", Richard Heuberger, Franz Huter e Otto Stolz . In: Giuseppe Albertoni et al. (Ed.): La storia va alla guerra. Storici dell'area trentino-tirolese tra polemiche nazionali e primo conflitto mondiale (=  Studi e Ricerche 18 ). Università degli Studi di Trento, Trento 2018, ISBN 978-88-8443-825-6 , p. 285-300, reference: pp. 298-299 (Italian).
  11. ↑ Gisela Framke: In the fight for South Tyrol , p. 132f
  12. ↑ Gisela Framke: In the fight for South Tyrol , p. 140
  13. ↑ Below the surface, the Italian population waited for irredentism. Gisela Framke: In the fight for South Tyrol , p. 156
  14. ↑ Steininger: 1918/1919. The division of Tyrol , p. 9.
  15. ↑ Gisela Framke: In the fight for South Tyrol , p. 128
personal data
SURNAME Battisti, Carlo
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Italian Romanist, Italianist and toponomist
DATE OF BIRTH October 10, 1882
PLACE OF BIRTH Trent
DATE OF DEATH March 6, 1977
Place of death Empoli